


Liminal

by StarHost



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Dragon Age II - Act 1, Dysfunctional Sibling Dynamics, Emotional Constipation, Family Loss, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Haircuts, Lots of awkwardness, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Hawke (Dragon Age), Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), Strained Relationships, in which the hawke siblings attempt to talk to each other and dont know how
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29455377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarHost/pseuds/StarHost
Summary: Carver opens the door to a rush of light and wafting heat.(In which Carver comes back late one night, and Hawke is still awake.)
Relationships: Carver Hawke & Female Hawke, Carver Hawke & Male Hawke, Hawke & Carver Hawke
Kudos: 5





	Liminal

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in 2015. It is only by the grace of the universe and my good friend Sleeper that it ever got finished. 
> 
> Apologies for any rust.

Carver opens the door to a rush of light and wafting heat. 

He’s aware that it’s late - far later than he expected - and as he steps inside he leaves behind the blanketing blackness of a starless sky. Gamlen’s hovel (theirs, he supposes) is dismal as ever, makeshift furniture tucked into rotted corners as if order mattered amongst the mould. Still, they’ve lived in worse, and someone’s thought to light the fire, so the room is warm and Carver isn’t groping about in the dark trying not to trip over his own boots. That’s something, right? 

The warm illumination reveals a figure by the flames, seated roughly on a worn chair with notches up one leg. There’s a grunt of annoyance as weight is shifted, and he can see shoulders tense, then relax, as a body exhales. 

Meaning to make straight for bed, he scoots by the scene, steps muted on the aged floorboards. Not his problem, he figures. But then it is, sort of, because he has one hand on the door to the bedroom and the body looks at him. 

“You’re back rather late.” Hawke says, legs crossed on the chair. “Any excitement? I hear Kirkwall’s nightlife likes to bite.”

“Nothing tried to kill me on the walk back. So no.” Carver says, immediately defensive. Then he adds, “I was working.”

Hawke meets his eyes, falcon to a scampering mouse. Carver feels something at the base of his skull, and he blinks on instinct, looking away. He ought to be used to that by now, he thinks, but Hawke’s eyes are coals in the fire, and looking into them sears at his skin slowly; embers that glow long into the night. 

Tightly, he says, “Mother?” and Hawke nods towards the other room.

“Turned in a couple hours ago.”

“Oh.” Of course. 

Their voices slip into silence, broken only through the faint crackling of flame. Hawke shifts slowly, working on uncrossing a leg, and Carver catches a glint of metal at their lap.

“What’s -” He starts, but, oh, they’re scissors, cloth wrapped tightly around the axis to keep the blades from separating. Hawke’s fingers are curled carefully around another shape, a shard of glass, but he can see the fire in it, so it’s not _quite_ glass, and instead he says, “Now?”

They snort, eyes narrowing without crinkling at the corners, and Carver knows a shrug is coming before it happens. Hawke leans forward a fraction, moves more into the light.

“Yeah, why not?”

“It’s dark out.” Carver says. 

Hawke offers another raise of their shoulders. 

“Can you _see_?”

“I lit the fire.”

His brows knit at that, because the room is rather warm - even without his armour - so the fire had to have been going for some time already. But the floor around his sibling is clean, which means Hawke hasn’t started yet, and so. 

So Carver looks again, closer, and there are rings around Hawke’s eyes that don’t belong to makeshift make-up, and a broken off shard of the mirror glints from near the mantle. The burn falters in their gaze, trips up for a fraction of a second, and something worn and exhausted stirs underneath. Hawke looks impossibly old then, curled in on themself like a withering vine. A bubble of something scratchy and molten heats him up from the inside; irritated. Carver hates it.

“Fine.” He spits, shoving into the bedroom.

It takes careful hands to remove his armour, but Carver has those, even now, and he’s done this so often it’s nearly instinct. The buckles are unfastened, then he works each piece apart, setting metal and leathers in piles next to his bed. The air feels decidedly cooler as he strips down, tossing a sweat-soaked shirt onto the sheets, but it’s not unwelcome. His sword rests gently against a wall, and Carver makes a note to clean the blood off in the morning. He gets down to underclothes, and puts something loose and dry back on, and then he’s sitting on his bed, staring at the candle across the room and simmering. 

He should go to bed, he thinks. He should. His body aches at all the joints, and slipping under the covers into unconsciousness tempts him like blissful paradise. But he sits and breathes and glares at the candle flame, and his mind is jumbled up like a bramble in cat’s fur, and he knows sleep is beyond his reach right now.

Closing his eyes he huffs once, then tries to properly exhale. He doesn’t know why he’s so angry, only that it happens sometimes, and when he’s around Hawke it happens most times, bubbling out of him violently, rock blasted from a mountainside. He keeps trying to breathe, constructing a pattern of ins and outs made of numbers and beats, and slowly the scratching in his head settles into a tired weight at his temples. Covering his face with his hands, Carver sighs. 

Bethany would have done so much better here. Thinking about her hurts, still, but over the year they’ve spent in Kirkwall it’s dulled from what it was. The wound her absence left feels like a bruise now, spreading purple across his chest and guts and insides, tender if pressed. 

Carver misses her, thinks that maybe Kirkwall could be bearable with his twin by his side, fingers tangled in hers, secure. Bethany understood Hawke much better than he had, understood _Carver_ much better than he could even begin to grasp. She liked to tease, sometimes, but she was always kind when he was struggling, always careful but direct, always taking him seriously. Bethany never laughed at his curiosities, never said his questions were silly (even the ones that were, surely). He misses that; having someone to help him solve this endless puzzle of feelings, someone he could trust with the most delicate of his thoughts. 

There’s no one like that now. Just an empty, hollow space someone irreplaceable used to occupy, hushed worries whispered in the dark, no longer answered.

The Bethany-bruise aches, and Carver thinks, quietly, that she had trusted him too.

  
He lifts his head as something thumps on the floor outside the bedroom. A muffled curse follows, and he thinks: _Just Hawke_. Another swear hisses through the wall after a moment, but it’s quieter, concealed before silence falls in once again. Carver isn’t fuming anymore, he realizes, and he’s _curious_ , and, well. He just wants to see what Hawke is trying to _do_. He makes his way to the door and opens it carefully, peering into the hovel’s main room. Hawke is still before the fire, one leg on the chair and one on the floor, but a look of intense concentration is scrunched on their face, hands spread and glowing faintly. The scissors are perched haphazardly on a thigh, and the mirror shard moves in front of them, bathed in the same unnatural light as it rises from their lap and into the air. It holds in front of Hawke’s face for an instant - a second long enough to make Hawke shoot an expression much like relief - and then the bedroom door creaks as Carver realizes he’s stepped into the room. 

Hawke starts like a spooked rabbit, head and legs jerking in opposite directions. The scissors tumble off their leg almost comically, and with concentration now broken the mirror hits the floor with a muted ping. They manage to stay on the chair, but face Carver with momentarily wide eyes, and he thinks: _less rabbit, more owl_.

There’s a sense of victory in catching his sibling off guard, however petty the circumstance. Carver finds himself relishing the shot of smugness at the base of his skull, and his lips twitch upwards involuntarily. Hawke blinks at him, wide-eyed and wild, and Carver sees a distant flash of something - _an arm hooked around him in a headlock, mud in his hair_ \- then it’s gone, whisked into the darkness.

“Carver. I—“ Hawke falters briefly, sharp. They regain themselves a moment later, blinking their face smooth. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“No.” Is all he says.

The smugness settles, a thin coat over his skin. He holds his gaze on his sibling, back straight, posture more than a little proud. 

Silence has always been familiar between them, not so much comfortable as expected. Hawke blinks, waits a few beats to see if anything more happens, then slowly moves to grab the mirror from the floor. The mirror is as intact as it was before, a thick shard the size of their hand that was salvaged from a Darktown barrel. The scissors, on the other hand, are slightly worse for wear, cloth unravelling in the fall enough for the blades to pop apart. They rest in Hawke’s hands in two pieces, still sharp, but in need of reassembly.

As Hawke begins to rewrap the scissors, Carver clears his throat. He tilts his head a little, one eyebrow scrunched.

“What were you doing?”

“It’s not obvious? I thought you already knew.” 

Hawke’s mouth slides up at one corner, a smirk that’s far too familiar. The whole thing is a dodge, but Hawke says it like it’s personal, like they’re making fun of him for wondering, and it slides under his skin instantly, making muscles tense. 

“No. I mean — _Yes_ , but—” He flounders for words and Hawke’s grin widens. Carver crosses his arms in front of his chest, trying not to let it get to him. “Look, I _know_ what you’re doing, or, _trying_ to do, alright? I just. You’ve been here awhile, haven’t you, without starting, so. And it doesn’t take that _long_ , right, so — ugh.” 

He ends the statement by rolling his shoulders in frustration. Words have never been his strong suit. Hawke twines them around their fingers, makes them dance like puppets on thin, invisible strings. It’s frustrating, because he never feels like he’s really _understanding_ , which makes him feel foolish, and this time around there’s no Bethany to talk him through it. 

Hawke just laughs, though, which makes him feel worse, and he frowns.

“Forget it,” He says, but Hawke’s hands are up before he can continue.

“Carver, relax.” They say, like it's _easy_. “Nothing to get worked up about. it’s just a haircut, and I’m being a bit lazy over it, okay?”

They try to roll it off, movements casual and overly familiar, and Carver would believe it any other day. He does, a little, because nothing ever phases Hawke; the world falls down around them and they laugh. But theres… Something. He doesn’t know what it is. Something tense and twisting, there, like a muscle spasm, then… gone. He can’t explain it, he doesn’t understand what he’s noticing himself. But.

“You were using magic?”

Hawke gives him a small smile, wiggling the shard at him. 

“I need both hands to cut my hair, yeah? Anders showed me this way to make it stay. Up, I mean. In the air.” They wave their pointer finger in a circle.

“So you were…?” Carver asks for clarification.

“Keeping my mirror afloat. Yes. ” There’s a twinge to their voice Carver feels more than notices. Something. He glances at the floor, sees the broken sliver of shard, remembers Hawke’s hissed swears, and puts it together. 

“You can’t, can you?” He blinks, words out before he’s thought of them. 

Hawke’s gaze is a flash freeze. “Carver—“

“No. You can’t. I’m right. You can’t do it.” 

He says it with surprised certainty, almost in disbelief at himself for coming to the conclusion, and he looks from Hawke to the fire. Hawke’s reaction is enough to confirm his question, and the smugness that overtakes him makes him glance back, corners of his mouth tugging crookedly upwards. 

His sibling straightens, mouth pressed downwards in a frown. It’s restrained, though, as if Hawke is biting back something particularly instinctive, and Carver expects a scathing rebuttal. He doesn’t get one.

There’s a silence the span of two tired heartbeats. 

“You should sleep.” Hawke says, exhaling. Their voice is quieter, neither malicious nor mocking, but guarded even so, and so very… Something, again. 

It’s not really a command, Carver thinks. It should be, and the reaction throws him, dampening his smugness in a wave of realization. It’s a plea. Which means, Hawke is _asking_ , and… okay. Hawke is asking. 

He considers it, though; sighing while his body slumps around him, weight draping down as the day seems to catch up all at once. He’s exhausted, and his tenseness around Hawke must have been the final straw, because everything suddenly aches twice as hard, and his vision weakens for a moment. He could sleep for days, he thinks. He’d be out before he’d even fully touches the mattress. 

But…

Hawke hadn’t ribbed him, just then. Hawke had asked - eyes locked on him, posture firm, hands clenched around their supplies - with that Something in their voice, in their look, that Something that was really starting to feel, maybe, a little bit like —

“Oh.” He says. 

Weariness. 

He’s been taking baby steps into the room, but suddenly begins to move more surely, picking his way over the old wood and stopping in front of his sibling, back to the fire. The radiating heat is an assurance, somehow, and with the last confidence from his moment of understanding, he extends his hand.

Hawke looks at him like he has two heads. 

“I can—“ Carver tries, and there’s silence.

He looks down at the mirror shard as Hawke looks at him, expression strange and sudden. An array of emotions writhe in the nooks of his sibling’s face, hidden from the light but not invisible, if you knew where to look. He does now, in this moment, and though Hawke makes no move towards him, he thinks he’s okay. Hawke never liked to get help from him. Hawke never liked—

“Okay.” Hawke says, voice low. “Get a chair.”

He does, and he sits with his back to the flames, fitting his legs onto the stool stretchers with a slow expectancy. His body is weary and undoubtedly wiped, but the idea of what he’s doing sends a burst of resolve through him, something grounding and willing to withstand. In front of him Hawke shifts, tools repaired and resting beneath their hands.

They stare at him for a moment, spine straightening. Carver expects them to crack some sort of joke; do something to make all this roll over their shoulders and dissipate in the shadows, so he’s surprised when a heartbeat later Hawke slumps, expression unchanged, but more obviously tired. They run a hand over their face, exhaling, and a couple fingers come back black; the rings around their eyes botched.

Then Hawke passes him the mirror shard, and the weight of the moment rests in his chest and pushes down.

Between them they arrange for a position that doesn’t block all of Hawke’s light; a slight feat considering Carver’s bulk, but he sits carefully with the mirror between his hands, steadfast.

He realizes that he hasn’t really Looked at his sibling in a long time, and as Hawke gets to work he finds the opportunity, soaking in whatever details he’s not exhausted enough to miss. They look… focused, obviously, covered in a thin layer of dried sweat and dirt from the toils of the day. They bring a hand up to their hair, and as they find a chunk to cut, Carver inhales. 

Hawke’s hair is a bird’s nest, to put it one way; matted and tangled and poking out at messy angles. It’s still in its usual style, (which Carver remembers from having helped in the early days: a straight line of bangs between two longer bits at the sides, looking like someone used an overturned bowl as a model, which wasn’t entirely false when they were kids) but the bangs are poking into Hawke’s eyes, skewed and too-long, and the sides hang far past their chin, bristling against the meat of their throat. 

It’s off, he realizes, an exhausted thing in desperate need of repair, and Carver suddenly understands why Hawke could not let this go. What he doesn’t understand, as he watches another chunk of hair fall to the floor, is why they didn’t do this sooner.

“Hey,” he says. He means to be calm but it comes out too sharp, striking the silence like a readied blade. Hawke’s eyes slide from the mirror to his face, equally unsheathed.

He suddenly feels like he’s sitting on coals.

“You look awful,” he blurts. “I mean—your hair,—I mean, you don’t look _awful_ , you—“ Carver clamps his mouth shut for a moment, nearly biting his tongue. He screams at his brain, then tries again. “Why did you wait so long…? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it like this.”

His sibling doesn’t reply— mouth instead twitching upward in a huff of mirth (and Carver nearly starts to bristle from being laughed at. _Again_.)— until they do, eyes floating back down to their own muted reflection. 

“The honest truth?” Hawke starts (and Carver wants to bark at this, because when has Hawke ever voiced _that_ ). “I….don’t know, really.” The words are slow and even, and they finish levelling their bangs carefully, approving it with a tiny nod before moving on to the sides. 

He expects that to be the end, used to vague non-answers, but after a moment his sibling actually…continues.

“It’s… been quite a year, hasn’t it.” Hawke releases their words carefully, punctuated by the soft snips of scissors to hair. “Hasn’t really… gone as planned.”

Carver blinks. “It’s been shit.”

“Yeah.”

It’s… still hard to believe nearly a year’s passed since they came to Kirkwall. Everything feels so foreign, still, so new despite days dragged by. But that’s just it, Carver supposes: the city has a way of making any given moment feel like both the sliver of a second and tens of thousands of years. He is both aged and new, worn and strapping, and the echoes of the past mingle with the shouts of the present; a dusty barrage of constant sound bouncing down narrow lowtown alleyways. 

Bethany’s screams are — suddenly — fresh in his mind. Bethany’s body, lifeless, vivid on the underside of his eyelids. 

“Carver?” 

He can’t breathe.

“Carver.”

A small, soft weight is on his arm, and the sensation is strange enough to bring him to ground. He opens his eyes, both jaw and chest tight, to find Hawke’s hand pressed against his limb. The scissors are back on their lap, and Hawke is gazing at him with an expression he doesn’t think he’s ever seen.

“I...” Their mouth opens once and closes again, and it looks as if the words behind Hawke’s lips are struggling to find their way out; clawing at their tongue against intense resistance. Hawke almost looks pained before looking… _guilty_ , amongst an array of things, and Carver feels lost in translation, until— “I… miss her, too.”

Oh. 

Bethany… was a topic they never talked about, Hawke seeming content enough to smile and joke and parade about as if she’d never existed. As if she’d never sat beside them, laughing at Hawke’s one-liners and shooting Carver the gentlest of smiles. As if she’d never held their hands, whites of her eyes straining in the dark as they fled from one town to another in the still of night. As if she’d never been there an era ago, toppling into the grass with the weight of a sibling on top of her, giggling “Hawke! Hawke!” until the other body released its torturous grasp. As if she’d never been their sister. 

He swallows. His throat is tight and dry, and at once he feels exceedingly uncomfortable. 

Hawke isn’t looking at him, eyes locked on the grain of the wood next to his feet.

“I,” They begin, fingers wrapped around blade handles, light flickering across their face, “I think, sometimes, that I’ll wake up, and she’ll be in the kitchen, stealing the last piece of bread. Or I’ll hear her laughing, just around the corner of The Hanged Man.” They squeeze their eyes shut for a moment, as if the words are hurting. The half of their hair that hasn’t been tended to bristles in the dim light.

Hawke looks as though they’re choking, unable to breathe. “It’s my fault.”

A stone drops deep in his stomach as Carver thinks, _It is._

The weight of it — the still-raw grief and acidic bitterness of nearly a year of loss — feels jagged, instead of justified, somehow. Pokes against his stomach lining, makes his innards recoil.

He says nothing, and the silence of Hawke’s confession stretches onwards. 

A pop in the crackles of the dimming fire breaks the quiet, flame-light warbling across both sibling’s faces. Carver watches Hawke for spans of time he can’t quite keep track of; follows the trembling glow of light licking at their face, feels the tables turning as his sibling keeps their head bowed, gripping scissor blades. Their knuckles start to tremble, and with a start Carver catches the shake to their shoulders, an unsteady inhale, and he comprehends what is happening before him, though it shocks him all the same. 

“I,” Hawke cracks, strained for a moment as if physically pushing the sounds from their lungs. “I’m sorry.”

Hawke has never cried before. Through their childhood scrapes and fights, through training gone amiss and scoldings given for rules bent, Carver’s older sibling has always responded to trouble with a grin and a quick retort. Sooner to flash teeth and bare words like sharpened knives than anything else, to let things that hurt Carver so easily, that pierce at him like needles simply roll off their shoulders as a stone in a meandering river, flowing in stride with a current that easily cuts him in two. 

“I’m so sorry.” Hawke’s words, shards at the base of a fall, broken from the merciless torrent above. “Carver,”

He… doesn’t like this. He feels something tight in his throat, his chest, something knotted and laced with panic. The shine of an animal’s eyes in torchlight, frozen, unblinking. He can feel a crawling on his skin; wants to shiver as gooseflesh rises on his arms, and he thinks, _this isn’t happening_. This is not something he should be seeing. It feels too personal, too private. Too much.

“Merah.”

His hand thunks onto their shoulder before his thoughts catch up to his muscles, and the sudden weight has the body before him whipping to meet his eyes, drawn and tense in a way Carver can’t follow. Two sets of brown meet each other and his sense of bewilderment kicks in as one pair is certainly, definitely shining against the dim light. Wet. 

_No no no no_. He sees something unearthed deep in the widened gaze that meets him, something fragile and worn and —

His eyes flicker straight into the fire instead, form tight, searing against the light but holding anyway. 

Carver’s grip is stiff and awkward, hand curling around the entirety of his sibling’s shoulder far too easily. Has it always been this small? The physical differences between them are enough to make him doubt their relation in his own anxiety — the square of his jaw to the wide, roundness of their chin, the way he looms almost twice as tall, clunky and bumbling and foolish. Even now he feels too much yet not enough, the ease at which he could wrap his arms around them almost as suffocating as the size of their shadow. 

Hawke is still staring, as if they’re _surprised_ or _shocked_ or — _No_ — the thought weighs itself firmly in his mind — _Not Hawke. Not Now._

“Merah.” His throat cracks on the foreign shape of the word, but he hears himself say it with purpose, wrenching his eyes away from the mantle and forcing them back to the form still caught in his grip. Looking. 

“It’s —“ He starts, and stops, because. _It’s your fault._

“I —“ He tries again, but. _I blame you._

 _You could have saved her._ He thinks, before he can say something this time. He breathes out through his nose, closes his eyes. 

_I think I knew you once._

The last licks of flame-light crackle between the two, throwing a momentary flash onto the metal in Merah’s hands; two loose halves held together by knots and wrapping. He’s not sure what to say in situations like these, has never been good with it with anyone else, nevermind his own older sibling, but in that brief reflection of silver, something strange slots itself into place. 

His free hand moves, slowly feeling for the blades, bumping over Merah’s knuckles, and the words sputter out as his eyes flit, unsure. 

“Your side bangs are uneven.” He says. He can feel the tense of Merah’s knuckles. His hand doesn’t squeeze down, but he nudges, still. “I can,” A swallow. “I can help.”

Merah’s response isn’t in words, loosening their hands until Carver can slide the scissors out and into his own. He finally lets go of their shoulder, the air greeting his palm oddly cool. A warmth he hadn’t noticed dissipates, and the appendage feels… less, somehow. 

Carver takes the scissors properly in his fingers, looking at the sides of Merah’s face. The half of Merah’s mane still poking into eyes and throat. The shadows of Merah’s face, black wounds flitting over tired, weary skin. 

He wonders if he looks like this, too. 

Merah doesn’t look at him as he cuts, choosing to search the floor for silent answers. They’re still wound, but with each chunk of hair that floats down Carver can see a tension slowly ebb out, a side of them relax just a fraction, and their face looks… different in a sense. Softer, he supposes.

The silence that makes room isn’t strung, this time, nor is it filled with anxiety or the uptight buzzing of emotions he can’t identify. It’s… well. There’s nothing in it, really, and it makes Carver feel sure of his own movements, focused and straightforward, like nothing is being held from him; intangible secrets he’s never parsed. It lays over them both in a way that just is, that what he sees is what’s happening, like there’s nothing… more. 

Like he can almost…

He wonders if Bethany had ever done this; snipped away at Merah’s ends with the last of the day’s flames, softly glowing embers painting warm skin in a way she would have known. The blanket of air around them a language her sparkling eyes never misread. She would smile, he thinks, and that alone would turn any task into treasure.

He almost wants to ask, but the bruise inside him aches, and he exhales instead. 

The rhythmic snips of the scissor blades come to a stop when he thinks he’s got the rest of it even, checking over Merah’s bangs and sides almost cautiously. A brief pang of shame strikes him as he seems to come back to himself, hes never been good at this, there was a reason he stopped trying all those years ago, Merah probably hates it, Maker, he’s _messed up_ —

But Merah simply raises the broken mirror shard on their lap to eye level, pauses a heartbeat, and smiles.

Carver doesn’t know what that means. He braces for a quip or insult, but isn’t ready to hear his sibling’s voice as it rolls out; low, toothless and… soft.

“Thank you.”

The tone has him blink, jerks him back to something decades old — _a small, chubby hand clutching at a purple bloom, pushing the scented stalk into his sibling’s palm, Merah’s look of open surprise, then wide, genuine glee_ — and he doesn’t know what to make of _that_.

Merah gets up before he can try, brushes any wayward strands from their lap, grasps the mirror shard tight. The twitch of their lips has smoothed out, but their face remains warm. 

“I’ll clean up and douse the fire.” They say, voice steady as if they hadn’t just been through… whatever this was. Carver blinks in confusion, almost irritated at how easily they shift over into this too-familiar thing, but a new, undefined weight in his brain bids him pause, and he listens. 

“You look tired, Carver.” Hawke says, already gathering the fallen bunches of hair on the floor. “You should sleep, while it’s still night.”

The thing in his brain provides the thought, _play along_ , and he isn’t sure why. He feels like theres something on the tip of his tongue, but not in a literal sense, and as much as he wants to grind his teeth at what this is all supposed to mean — Hawke’s nonchalance, this new _whatever_ — he stands from his stool, moving to put it back in its place. 

He’s been exhausted for hours, not that he’d voice it. Not to Hawke, despite.

“Sure.” Is what he says, moving to the door of the bedroom giving him only a view of his sibling’s back. Their shoulders aren’t so high as before… _were they higher before?_

_Maker._

He scrunches his eyes and rubs the heel of his palm in until the darkness starts to spark. Hawke dumps a handful of hair into the waste bin, and when Carver opens his eyes again his sibling is picking at any stray bits, head bowed.

“Good night.” He says to Hawke, and they look up to meet him one more time; not searing embers or birds of prey or shining wet. A familiar, foreign sparkle ghosts across them that Carver knows so strongly it makes him uncomfortable to see on anyone else. A sputter of shadow masks their face for only a moment, but in it he can only think, _you look like her, right now._

“Sweet dreams, Carver.” Hawke replies, like they’re giggling on the inside, pulled from a scene far in a distant future, or perhaps a simpler past. Echoes.

He breaks contact first, pushing the door open and stepping into the gloom of the bedroom, but it isn’t defeat he feels as he sits onto his bed, or irritation or anger. It’s something lighter. Something still just beyond him, but almost… _almost_ …

He falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow, and Carver Hawke’s slumber is dreamless.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to think the flower Hawke received is a chive blossom. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! It feels very surreal to have this finished after all these years.


End file.
